May nodded. Hey, I understand. I didn’t even know there were ghosts when I was alive. You’re ahead of the game.
“Yay,” Andie said.
Call North. Alice is safe here. Go.
“Right.” Andie looked once more at Alice, wrapped in her comforter and sound asleep, and at the hollow-eyed thing at the end of her bed.
Alice is safe, May said again. That thing has been with her since she was born. Go call North.
“Okay,” Andie said. “I’ll be back. Don’t… do anything.”
Then she escaped into the warmth of the hall and ran for Dennis.
Half an hour later, after a visit to Alice’s room where Dennis failed to see or feel anything out of the ordinary even though the thing was right there at the foot of the bed, Andie stood in the hall just outside Alice’s door listening to him give several non-ghostly explanations for what she’d seen while she kept her eye on the thing. He could talk as long as he liked, but she’d passed from wavering on the ghost question to being a true believer. “There are ghosts here,” she told Dennis. “I can’t leave Alice alone in there with that thing.” She looked through the door to where Alice slept peacefully under the dead gaze of a dead governess. “I should be in there with her. She’s in there with her.”
“Okay.” Dennis smiled at her as if she were a stubborn undergraduate. “Let’s assume there are ghosts.”
“Yes, let’s.”
He gave her a stern look. “Hysteria will not help. You’re starting to sound like Kelly. Has this ghost ever hurt Alice before?”
“The one at the foot of the bed? No. The other ghost, May, says Alice is safe.”
“Then she is,” Dennis said.
“Dennis, you don’t know that, you don’t even believe in her. I can’t leave my baby in there with her.”
“Alice is not a baby. Alice is an extremely intelligent, extremely adept little girl. Leave her be and go to bed. You’re exhausted and hallucinating.”
“Go to bed? There are ghosts in this house. I have to do something about this. The séance. My mother said you can ask ghosts to leave in a séance. Is that true?”
“Well, you can ask, but séances are superstition and chicanery,” Dennis said, his basset-hound eyes practically rolling. “You’ll just be fueling a charlatan’s ego and reputation.”
“Good, we’ll do that,” Andie said, and went out into the main hall and headed down the stairs to the second floor to find where Kelly was sleeping.
But Kelly wasn’t in her room, and it wasn’t until Andie looked over the gallery railing that she found her in the darkened Great Hall, talking in low tones to Bill, the cameraman.
“The séance tomorrow,” Andie called to her over the rickety railing. “Bring on your medium, I’m all for it.”
“Wonderful!” Kelly called back. “Oh, Andie… honey… that’s wonderful. Bill and I were just talking about that… hoping you’d change your mind, and we’re so glad.” She treated Andie to a flash of teeth in the dim light and then went on, her voice a little unsteady, as if she were drunk. “I’ll call Isolde to confirm now that you’re on board.” Her smile morphed into manufactured sympathy. “You look really wiped out… all these unexpected guests. You go back up to bed and get some rest now.”
“Right,” Andie said, and went back up to Alice’s room, sparing a thought about warning Southie that Kelly was two-timing him. And when he asked why, she could tell him that a ghost told her. One crisis at a time.
When Andie went in, the old ghost was still standing at the end of the bed, her hands folded in the flounces of her skirt, her eyes still empty pits, and Alice was still fast asleep. May had been waltzing around in the hall by the bathroom, but she came back in when Andie went in.
Did you call North?
“No,” Andie said, as she felt Alice’s forehead for fever or any other signs of distress.
Alice smiled in her sleep and then rolled over.
Alice is fine. I told you, that nightmare has been watching her since birth.
Andie turned on May. “She’s a nightmare? What does that make you?”
Hey, May said. All I ever did was ask you questions. She swished her skirts again. You were sleeping in my bedroom. You owed me that much. When are you going to call North?
“Tomorrow,” Andie lied, sitting down on the floor next to Alice’s bed. “It’s too late, he’ll be in bed now.”
He won’t care if it’s you.
“No.” Andie leaned her head against Alice’s mattress. She wasn’t calling North, that was the last thing she needed, North here feeding May’s fantasies, not to mention her own. No, she was going to have a séance, tell the ghosts to leave, and then get the kids the hell out of Dodge and back to Columbus. There might be ghosts in Columbus, too, but she was damn sure they weren’t in North’s house. If they fed on emotion, they’d starve to death there.
Call him tomorrow then, May said and left, and Andie wrapped her arms around herself against the cold from the thing at the end of the bed and settled down to watch through the night until Alice woke up.
When Alice woke up the next morning, she looked at Andie, half asleep with her head on the side of the bed, and said, “What are you doing?”
Andie straightened to get the crick out of her neck and checked out the foot of the bed. Nothing there. “I was worried.”
Alice looked down at her, perplexed. “Why?”
“Because there was a ghost at the end of your bed.”
“There aren’t any such things as ghosts.”
“I saw her, Alice,” Andie said, pretty sure it was the right thing to say. “Your aunt May told me all about her. I can see them just like you can.”
Alice stared at her for a long moment, and Andie thought, She doesn’t see ghosts, she thinks I’m crazy, she thinks she’s trapped with a crazy person, and then Alice said, “That’s just Miss J. She doesn’t hurt me.”
“Miss J.” Andie was torn between relief that Alice saw the ghosts, too, and horror that Alice saw the ghosts, too. “Good to know. We’re moving into the nursery anyway.” Andie got up slowly as her muscles screamed. “You and me. There are two beds in there. We’ll be roommates.”
Alice shrugged. “Miss J can go in there, too.”
“Yeah, but in there I have a bed,” Andie said, and went to take a shower and face her day.
It began with cornering Carter in the library where he was reading in the window seat, ignoring the storm that still raged outside.
“I talked to your aunt May last night,” she said to him, and watched his eyes freeze on the page. “She said Mrs. Crumb thinks you killed her, but it was the ghost at the foot of Alice’s bed who pushed her through the railing because she was going to take Alice away. I don’t know how ghosts can push humans, but May says that’s what happened.”
He kept his eyes on his book.
“She thinks you think Alice did it.”
He was still for a long time, and she was about to turn away when he said, “Alice wouldn’t hurt anybody.”
“Okay, then,” Andie said, filing that under “May doesn’t know as much as she thinks she does.” “I need you to know that I am going to get you out of here.”
He ignored her, his eyes on his book, but he didn’t turn the page. He was listening.
“It’s going to be okay. But first, I’m going to make you breakfast.”
“French toast?” he said, looking up.
“If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.”
He nodded and went back to reading.
Dear God, she thought as she went to make breakfast, he listens to me talk about ghosts and still asks for French toast.
When everybody except Alice was eating, she went to get Alice’s cereal, pulling Crumb into the kitchen with her.